Sports Relief, the big guilt game

Last Friday was Sports Relief day - again. 

Another evening of being bombarded by a celebrity sprinkled, charity-giving TV marathon. 

Lots of famous people do lots of funny or physically challenging things so that we , the audience, donate lots of our money.

Seb Coe, Olly Murs and Sally Phillips doing lots of funny things for Sports Relief

Humorous sketches and chatty hosts, intersperse the laughs with horrendous pictures of beautiful children in faraway countries dying from malaria or pneumonia or picking out food from enormous rubbish dumps. 

Often the celebrities have been flown over to the faraway places to experience the suffering first hand, breaking down in front of the cameras as they beg us to donate anything, anything at all. 

" Just pick up the phone and make that call.  
 £5 can be the difference between life and death. 
You can be that difference." 

It's very clever. 
It plays on our guilt at every level. 
We feel guilty that we are sitting in warm living rooms with big televisions watching people who don't even have a roof over their heads..
We feel guilty that our biggest worries are about work or exams or what to cook for dinner while there are people who don't even know if they are going to find enough food to make it through the day.
We feel guilty that even the richest of us can access health services for free when there are children dying from completely curable diseases.
As we watch people raising money by being sponsored to run marathons, swim in freezing water, cycle for miles, dance for hours, we feel guilty that we are sitting at home doing nothing.
And once we have watched the phone number for donating flash up on the screen, we feel guilty if we don't donate.
We feel guilty if our friends have donated and we haven't
By the time we crawl into bed after one of these fund raising nights. we have been emotionally battered into charitable submission.
And they are always on a Friday night to make sure that if we don't donate, our weekends will be ruined by our guilt.
 How can we go out and spend money having a good time on a Saturday night, when people are dying for lack of the £5 we didn't donate. 
They are sleek, professional, carefully planned assaults on our emotions these Comic or Sports Relief nights. 
 They are presented  by carefully chosen, familiar, popular celebrity hosts from a variety of backgrounds and genres to make sure that there is someone to appeal to everyone. They last for so long ( 6 hours ) that is impossible to put on the television any time between teatime an bedtime without coming across someone begging you to do the right thing.
And it's true, we should all do the right thing.  Those of us who can afford to give, should.
But the truth is, that although all of us could probably give more than we do, it is not individuals doing the right thing that is going to rectify the world imbalance in the distribution of wealth

.“While we do our good works let us not forget that the real solution lies in a world in which charity will have become unnecessary.” 
― Chinua Achebe, Anthills of the Savannah

It is completely wrong that anyone in this rich, modern world should be starving or dying because they are unable to access the medication that could save them.
It is completely wrong that anyone should be homeless or penniless.
But while the richest 300 people in the world are more wealthy than the poorest 3 billion, while the impersonal, enormous multi-national corporations make all the rules, while bankers feel that they are accountable to no one, nothing will change.

How about some of those presenters on the Comic Relief nights giving away some of the expensive clothes they wear or donating the cost of a trip to the hairdresser. 
 How about some of our footballers earning £100,000 a week, donating one week's salary. How about Starbucks or Amazon donating some of the tax they haven't paid.
That would be a lot of £5s!
But the truth is, collective guilt is never as effective or powerful as individual guilt.
So once again, last Friday's Sports Relief made a record amount of money: over £51.000000 
Which just goes to show how much people are prepared to pay for one night of guilt-free sleep. Or maybe you'll feel better about yourself for even longer, perhaps even until Red Nose Day.

Romance is Alive in an MX5

Spring is here. 
I know it is, because last Saturday, for the first time this year, I drove our very old MX5 along the A27 with the roof down.
And it felt amazing. 
Music playing, sun shining, deep green fields flashing by. 
So close to the ground you are almost molten.
You never feel more alive than when you're driving in an MX5.
It was bought on a whim, this little black car of ours.
Ninesh phoned me one lunchtime a few years ago and said he had seen an old MX5 roadster advertised on the intranet.
" It's a bargain," he said. " A once in a lifetime opportunity.  The owner's going to bring it in tomorrow so I can have a look at it."
And the owner brought it in. 
And Ninesh looked at it, test drove it and bought it, all before the end of his lunch hour.
And then he phoned me.
" I've added it to our insurance already," he explained, " so I'll drive it home after work.
Don't tell the kids.  It'll be a surprise."
" It will," I agreed, " it's still a surprise to me."
I was just cooking dinner in the kitchen that evening when Joss came racing in.
" Mum, mum," he yelled, " dad has just driven up in a convertable.  Where did he get it from?"
" Why don't you go and ask him?" I laughed.
" Come on Mia," shouted Joss, pulling her through the front door.
I followed them, watching as they clambered in and out of the passenger seat while Ninesh proudly showed them the radio, the seats, how the roof could be pulled up and down.

" It's amazing mum,' said Joss, his eyes shining," it's only got 2 seats but there's a little gap in the back, just big enough for snacks! "
" And is the boot full of flowers?" I asked Ninesh.
He laughed.
 Our " boot full of flowers," story is ( literally ) Hollywood romantic.
I had given up my London: job, flat, family, friends, to begin an uncertain new life with Ninesh in California.
Jet-lagged and a little shaky from a customs interrogation, I stepped through the arrivals gate at LA airport and into Ninesh's arms.
" The car's not far," he said, grabbing my bright red suitcase and pulling it and me through the sliding doors.
Outside I stopped for a moment and breathed in the warm, polluted LA air, gazing up at the sun-filled, never-ending blueness of the sky.
"Welcome to the rest of your life," my mum had said as she and my dad drove me to the airport that morning.
And here it was, the rest of my life, just beginning.
" Come on," said Ninesh, dragging me into the cool darkness of the car park.
" It's not much," he said, pointing at a small, blue, metallic car parked in a corner, " but it's all I could afford and it will get us around."
I nodded, not really listening. I've never been that interested in cars.
" Shame it's not that one," I said, pointing at the sleek, black, shiny Mustang convertable we were just passing.
Ninesh stopped in front of it.
" I know," he sighed, " I've always wanted a convertible. Perhaps our key will fit it."
And leaving my suitcase in the middle of car park, he tried to fit the key to his car into the boot.
" Nesh," I gasped, " you can't just put your key in someone else's car. You'll be arrested."
Ninesh laughed, slipped the key into the lock and popped open the boot.
" I wonder where all those flowers have come from?" he grinned.
I stepped forward and stared into the boot. 
He was right, it was full of flowers.
I looked from Ninesh to the flowers and back to Ninesh, completely confused.
" This is our car," he said, " I wanted it to be a surprise."
" But we don't have any money," I said, " it must have cost a fortune."
" It was a bargain," grinned Ninesh, " a once in a lifetime opportunity. Welcome to America."
And so, with a boot full of flowers, music playing and sun shining, we put the roof down and drove into our new life.

And even if a very old MX5 in West Sussex will never be quite the same as a roaring Mustang in California, whenever I put the top down and feel the rush of the wind in my hair and the warmth of the sun on my skin, I will always believe that the boot is full of flowers.

Pancake therapy

Last Tuesday was Shrove Tuesday, pancake day, here in England.

In our house most days are pancake days. Pancakes are one of the few things that Mia and Joss will eat for breakfast. So Shrove Tuesday doesn’t really mean much.  
But this year I got up very early to make pancakes for our Community Café.

Still half asleep, I measured out milk and flour and broke in an egg.

Outside the sky was just beginning to turn from black to velvet blue as I beat the ingredients together and let the mixture stand. 
Outside the world was filling with birdsong. 
Inside, the kitchen was filling with the smell of sizzling butter

There is something amazingly calming about cooking while the world is sleeping.
Nothing to break your train of thought.
No children asking unanswerable questions.
No canned laughter from the television.
No buzzing phones.
No faceless voices floating out of computers. 

Just you and your dreams and the hope that always comes with a brand new day.
As I poured the batter into the pan, it felt as though anything was possible.
That perhaps this was the day when my pancakes would be perfect.

The thing about making pancakes is that, as long as you have the right pan, there is very little that can go wrong,( unless you toss them too high).

If they get holes in while they cook, fill them in with a bit more mixture.

If they are too crispy, let them cool until they have softened.

If they are too thin, call them crepes.

If they are too thick call them " American style," pancakes.

If they are not perfectly round -  who cares, they still taste good.  

It would be great if life were like that.

If an emptiness of an aching heart could be filled with a drop of mixture.

If waiting for a while could make a problem disappear.
If calling something by a different name made everything fine.
The truth is, life will never be as simple as making a pancake,
But there are always things you can  do to make it better, like choosing the most delicious filling: sugar and lemon, nutella, maple syrup, jam, squirty cream. ....
Perhaps the best thing to do is to begin each day with delicious decisions and a little bit of pancake therapy.

Early morning stack of pancakes

              

Love and roses

The strange thing about love is that although we spend most of our lives searching for it and desiring it and longing for it, no one can really define it or explain it or understand it.
And it has so many different forms, love.
There is the kind that sweeps you off your feet and sends your world spinning into  disarray.
There is the kind that grows slowly from the heart until it has wrapped itself around you like a warm blanket.
There is the kind that consumes you until you can think of nothing else and life has no other meaning.
There is the kind that hurts  and the kind that makes you laugh for joy.
There is the kind that anchors you and the kind that makes you fly.
There is the kind that makes you feel vulnerable and the kind that makes you feel strong. 
And then there is the unconditional kind that you take for granted:
the kind a parent gives to their child.
And that's the kind that makes us who we are.
That " no-strings-attached-devoted-love," that gives us the courage to take our first steps, say our first words, make our first mistakes,  knowing that someone will always be there to catch us if we fall.
It's the kind of love that comes with no expectations, the kind of love that is so unassuming you almost forget it's there.
 But if you don't have it, the world is a frightening, complicated, meaningless place.
 You don't dare try anything because there is no one to catch you if you fall.
Or you try everything because there's no one to care what you do.
It's not just that love completes you but that it supports you and gives your life meaning.
It is love that holds our fragile world together.

When my mum was ill last week, Ninesh, my husband, bought her some roses.
They were bright and beautiful, bringing warmth and colour to the whitewashed walls and polished floors. of the hospital wards.
But you're not allowed to have flowers in hospitals anymore.  They bring germs and allergies and the scent of hope.
So we took them back to her house and put them on the oval table just like she asked.
Like us, they were waiting for her to come home.
A reminder that no-stringss-attached-devoted-love goes both ways, that for now it is our turn to catch her if she falls.
They kept blooming, the roses, their colours almost glowing against the greyness of these rainy days.
They were still blooming when mum came home.
I hope she knew what they were meant to say.
That in the end, whatever form it takes,  perhaps that's what love is: a vase of constantly blooming roses that fills the world with hope and colour and dreams.

Stay with us Scotland

" What do you think about Scottish independence?" my father-in-law asked me as we were clearing out his garage last week.
I stopped, my arms full of old books, and looked at him, shocked.
Because I suddenly realised that I hadn't really thought about Scottish Independence at all.
That's probably because all we can do  in the South of England at the moment, is think about the weather'
The good thing about all this rain and flooding ( not for the people who have lost their homes to the floods of course) is that it legitimises the English desire to talk about the weather.
" Is this rain ever going to stop? Is it going to reach our houses? Have you seen all those fields that have turned into lakes? Can you believe its still raining? Look at those grey clouds. When are the government going to do something about it?"
And much as I love to blame the government for everything,  I find it hard to blame them for the weather.
But I do blame the weather for the fact that I haven't really thought about Scotland and its desire to be separate from England.
And I do understand.  
It has fought so fiercely for so many centuries to maintain its own identity.
It's not just the kilts and the haggis and the Hogmanay, it's the wit and the raw creativity and the stories and the beauty and the ability to survive against the odds.
Why should that all be part of someone else's country?
Why should what makes your country unique be lost to what makes another country important?
I can see why Scotland might choose to become independent.
Why it might choose to move away from a country that doesn't seem to care about it.
But I hope it doesn't.
Not just because we would have no Winter Olympic team without them but because we live in a world that already has too many borders.
Borders dividing the rich from the poor, the East from the West, the blacks from the whites, the Muslims from the Hindus.
It's easy to find the things that make us different from each other.
Easy to build fences or walls or borders to make sure those differences remain.
Easy to create something worth fighting for.
What's hard is finding the things that we have in common, the dreams we share, the peace worth hoping for. 
What's hard, is breaking down barriers, removing boundaries, opening borders.
Scotland is unique and beautiful and complicated and full of history and fairy-tales.
Perhaps if England had valued it better, found goals to share and successes to celebrate, perhaps then Scotland wouldn't be seeking to add another border to our divided world.
At the risk of sounding like David Bowie: stay with us Scotland. 
Give us one more chance to value and understand you- another hundred years should do it, as long as its stopped raining by then.

Beautiful Scotland

The Great Wedding Bake Off

I'm not really one for baking.
Over the years I have dutifully baked birthday cakes that usually come out flat and cupcakes for cake sales that usually taste of nothing.
But last weekend we were invited to a wedding ( I'm not really one for weddings either) and instead of a traditional wedding cake that most people don't eat, the bride and groom asked all their guests to bring a cake.
It was an inspired idea. 
A Great Wedding Bake-off.
And we all rose to the challenge.
It's not just the baking, it's the time spent searching out the best recipe, the hours spent pouring over pictures to find the right decorations, the days spent deciding what shape it should be.
We even did an uncharacteristic and disastrous practice run, boiling rose petals, simmering cream.
" Tastes like grass and vegetables," said Mia, pulling a face.
And she was right, more like rabbit food than wedding fayre.
So we returned to the recipe books and started again.

The night before the wedding found us weighing and stirring and whisking and pouring.
And it was fun.
It made us feel as though we were part of the preparations for the big day.
As though by pouring our heart and soul into a cake, we could pour love and happiness into the marriage of our friends.
In the end we stopped trying to be clever and went for simple. 
 A rose-flavoured sponge ring covered in multi-coloured hundreds and thousands, the centre filled with a bunch of white roses and tiny edible roses circling the edge. 
It wasn't sophisticated or perfect but it was so much better than anything Mia or I have ever baked before that we were bursting with creative pride.

The hardest thing was getting it to the wedding without dropping it.
 But amazingly, we managed.
Breathing a sigh of relief, we handed it over to be added to the table, already groaning  under the weight of mango pavlova, kitkat special, chocolate dream, butterscotch wonder, death-by-chocolate-brownies, flapjack royale, rainbow surprise and more sugar, icing and sweets than a dentist's worst nightmare.

When all the first and main courses had been eaten, when all the loving speeches had been made and the embarrassing stories shared, it was time for the cake eating to begin.
And we guests took our task seriously, piling plates with as many cakes as possible, sharing on tables so that nothing went untasted.
By the end of the evening, just  the thought of cake was turning us all green.
And our creation didn't win.
The engraved cut-glass plate for the best tasting cake went to the mango pavlova and the plate for the bride and groom's favourite went to our neighbour, Gill, for her  chocolate and flower covered letters C and D ( Caroline and Dez- the bride and groom ).
And when the dancing was over and the happy couple well and truly married, we climbed into a taxi home. 
Sitting in the back, Gill clutched her plate close to her heart.
" I never thought I'd win," she sighed.
I looked at Mia and smiled
Because the best thing about this Great Wedding Bake Off is that the right person won.

And anti-weddinger though I am, it truly was a beautiful day, full of love and happiness and warmth and joy.... and a tableful of colourful cakes and delicious dreams.

So Caroline and Dez, may your life together be full of love and laughter and lots and lots of chocolate cake.

Switzerland, surprises and 40 year old headbangers

Last weekend Ninesh and I spent a wild weekend in Winterthur, Switzerland.
For a few years, when our daughter was a tiny baby, we lived in Winterthur. 
 And although it is more than 14 years since we left, going back there always feels a little bit like going home.
Its cafes, delicious coffee, cobbled streets and strange wooden statues fill me with a comforting sense of warm familiarity that you only have in places where you have been happy. 

Wooden statue resting in the streets of Winterthur- the jury's out as to whether he has a very long penis or just very long legs

As a foreigner, Switzerland is not an easy place to live.  
There are so many laws and rules that the Swiss are born knowing and everyone else just has to find out the hard way.
When we first moved there, I was 7 months pregnant and had to fly back to England for the last month because we didn't have health insurance in Switzerland. While I could speak German, Ninesh hadn't yet learnt it. I was staying at my parent's house when we received a phone call from the Swiss police. Ninesh had broken the law. He had put out a bag of rubbish in the wrong place with the wrong sticker. 
And it is not that anyone tells you which sticker to use or where to put the rubbish. 
 If you are Swiss, you just know that.
" How do they know who's rubbish it is?" I asked one of our friends when Mia had been born and we returned to Switzerland.
" Oh," she explained, " there is a special policeman whose job it is to go through rubbish bags that have been put in the wrong place until they find a name and address!"
" Do they have a special rubbish-sorting qualification?" I asked.
My friend just laughed.
And there are lots of other laws we found out the hard way:
If you live in a flat you may not take a shower after 11pm.  
You may not mow the lawn or go to the bottle bank on a Sunday....

But once you have learnt all the rules that and laws that are important for to you, Switzerland is one of the most beautiful, relaxing, friendly places you could live. 
We lived there for such a short time but the friends we made are still some of those closest to our hearts.
Which is why, last Saturday night, we were back there for our friend's surprise 40th birthday party. 
It was in an underground bar, the kind that you only seem to find in Switzerland  with metal art on the walls and car doors suspended from the ceiling, 

The whole place was ours: a tableful of food, unlimited cocktails, a dance floor and the familiar smiles of long-ago friends.
And we might all be over 40 ( almost all) but we danced and drank and laughed the night away until it was almost light outside.

Age cannot stop us headbanging

And when we woke up the next morning in our friends' beautiful flat, floating above Zurich, the world was white and sparkling and covered in snow.
Exactly as it should be in Switzerland.
And as we trudged and slid and crunched our way through the snow towards the tram and the airport and rainy England, it was hard not to wish for just one more day of chocolate and cheese and Swiss relaxation.
But however many times we fly away from Winterthur, we always know we will be back. There are some places that you never quite leave.

And there's always our friend's surprise 50th to look forward to.

Happy Birthday Christine.

Tax Return Resistance

There's something about the words " tax return,"  that turn my heart to stone and cause the life to seep from my soul
Words like capital gains allowance float incomprehensibly in front of my eyes and I try desperately to cling onto their meaning.
Ninesh sits patiently by my side, trying to control his frustration.
" What do you mean, you didn't keep the receipt for that?," he says.
"it's not that I didn't keep it," I say defensively, " it's just that I don't know where it is."
Every year, as April 5th arrives, I vow that this year will be the year I start filling in my tax return early, saving everything in an orderly way, remembering how much you can claim per mile, knowing exactly how much the mortgage interest was.
Every year I make that vow.
And every year it gets to January 20th, with 11 days to go before my return must be filed and I haven't even started.
I'm not sure why.
Once you start filling it in, it's never as bad as you think it's going to be. 
Especially now that you can do it virtually, on line and there's that reassuring percentage marker across the top showing you exactly how much of your form you have completed.
It's amazingly comforting.
" Yay," I shout triumphantly, "1% complete." 
Which means I've filled in my name and address.

I know it's churlish, this resistance to filling in a form, to adding and multiplying and percentaging, to totalling up my last year's life and slicing off a third.
But with every fibre of my being, I fight the moment when I have to sit down and do it.
I think maybe I struggle with the concept that parts of your life have to be defined purely by their monetary value.
Our flat in London, the lovely flat I used to live in, right in the heart of London next to the canal where I was woken every morning by the quacking of ducks, becomes a taxable asset with allowable expenditure.
The stories that I sit and write dreamily in the shed and living room, become a loss making business.
The long hours that I work at the Children's Centre, optimistically believing that they might really make a difference, are reduced to nothing more than a disappointing income. 
And I can't help finding it all depressing.
I can't stop myself from believing that what you do, should be so much greater than a balance between profit and loss.
 Life should mean so much more than the gap between taxable assets and disposable income.
I fill in my National Insurance Number and the details of my employer- 8% complete.
I'm making progress.

Most of the things we do, can't be quantified or valued: the cleaning, the smiling, the listening, the dreaming.
Yet those untaxable, non- profit making moments are what define us
I hate to see everything I have done over the last year divided up into sections and fitted into tickable boxes.
I like to believe I'm so much too mysterious and enigmatic to fit into a box
!
Self-employment done- 47% complete.

But if I am honest, there is a simpler reason why I spend so much time resisting filling in my tax return.
The truth is, it highlights my lack of organisation and the chaotic way I think and live.
Those are not things to be proud of.
If I had kept all my receipts in the same place, if I could remember where I had put my P60, if I had put all my invoices in the right file on my computer, then filling in a tax return would be easy.
But I haven't done any of that, so filling in my tax return highlights my failings- and that's never a nice thing to see on paper.

All the sections are done, 90% complete.

All that's left to do is to submit and pay.
Then it will be 100% complete.
The pain over for another year.

But somehow, even that seems wrong.

Recently my mum and dad were on holiday in the Canary Islands.
As my dad struggled to lift his foot onto the curb, leaning on his stick, a voice behind him asked if he needed help.
Dad declined and the owner of the voice, an elderly German man, walked past him and stood in front of him, waiting patiently.
" It's over for us," he said to my dad sympathetically as he finally made it onto the curb.
Taken aback, dad thought for a minute and said:
" But I still eat a lot! "

And he's right. 
The world is full of delicious food, still waiting to be eaten.
Until we breathe our last breath, nothing is over, nothing in life should be 100% complete.
Not even a tax return.

With my finger hovering over the "pay now," button, I watch the percentage marker:  97% complete.
For a moment I let my chaotic thoughts wander into 2014, a new year, still only 0.83% complete. I imagine it full of hopes and dreams and laughter and love ( I only ever imagine the good parts )  and all that untaxable potential gives me strength.

My resistance melts, I press the button.
My taxes are returned for another year.
My future is 0% complete.

That mother-son thing

One of the hardest things about being a mum, is the day you wake up and your son has outgrown you. 
I don't mean that he's suddenly taller than you ( although that happens too ) but that he suddenly feels that it's no longer cool to be seen anywhere in public with his mum.
No more shopping together for his clothes - " you always choose ugly things! "
No more meeting in town for a milkshake- " I'm meeting my friends! "
No more sitting together at the cinema- " why would I want to see that film with you? "
No more family days on the beach- " there's a whole group of us going later."
And if you do pass him in the street with his friends, you must absolutely not ever wave or show that you recognise him- " why did you do that mum? You're so embarrassing."

It's not that daughters don't do it too. It's just that their desire to be independent and free themselves from parental control doesn't seem to need such a complete disconnect.
Often our daughter will still let me meet her in town for a coffee ( if I'm paying ) or to go shopping  ( if I'm paying ) and she will even still sit next to me at the cinema ( if I'm paying ).
Girls seem to be able to mix family and friends more easily than boys.
And the hard thing with boys, is the suddenness with which it all happens.
Boys seem to lurch up the hill of adolescence in zig-zagging, unpredictable strides, while girls take it more slowly and long-sufferingly.
Our son, Joss, seemed to go to bed one night a sweet little boy, still wanting a goodnight kiss and a bedtime story, and woke up the next morning a grunting teenager.
As his mum, I found the speed at which it happened confusing and complicated and 
(dare I say it ) just a little bit sad.
Overnight I had to rethink a relationship that had been based on that special " mother-son thing,": 
knowing the things that made him grumpy, 
understanding, without words, when he was tired or hungry or out of his comfort zone, knowing when he just needed a hug or a few words of encouragement.
All of that was gone.
It felt as though during the night an alien had landed in my son's body and it was making him speak a language that I couldn't understand.
Whatever I said was wrong.
However I said it was irritating.
Whatever I wanted to know was none of my business.
" What would you like for breakfast?"     " Not hungry.
" What time will you be back?"               " Why?"
" Will you be home for lunch?"               " Dunno."
" You should wear a coat, it's freezing."  " It's not. Stop talking so much."

Ninesh, his dad, seemed completely unphased by the sudden change.  
He seemed almost relieved that someone in the house was, at last, speaking his language.
No more having to analyse emotions and discuss for hours how to deal with a situation.
" Leave him alone," he'd say, " he's told you he's not hungry." " If he gets cold, that's his problem."
And I know he's right.
But silently watching your son walking away from you is very hard. 
Accepting that he will no longer be the little boy, holding your hand as he skips along the pavement next to me, is hard.
To keep him close, I have had to learn a different way of being.
I have had to learn to bite my tongue, to listen not speak, to wait until information is offered rather than to request it, to cross the road when I see him and his friends in town, to interpret grunts, to keep the fridge full, to let him get cold and wet, to trust this stranger that is my son.

Finding things that we can do together, has been hard. 
He can go to football matches with his dad. 
He can discuss fashion and music with his sister.
He has little in common with me.
But last weekend we flew together to Berlin, taking his cousin, Toby, with us.
And perhaps because it is rare that we spend so much time together, perhaps because I have learnt to value moments that we share, we had a magical time.
We stayed with my cousin, surprised her son for his 10th birthday, go-karted at his party (not me!) cycled around the Brandenburg Gate on a six-seater bike (including me) and ate Bratwurst in the " Mauerpark," drifting across the no man's land of old East-West days.
And as we sat in the plane on the way home, Joss leant his head on my shoulder and fell asleep.
Very gently, I leant my head against his.
And for just a moment, he was skipping along the pavement next to me, holding my hand.
 

3 cousins waiting to go-kart in Berlin

Elvish Resolutions

So 2014 is here.
And I'm glad
2013 has had too much of the "13," in it for my liking.
To welcome in the new year, we spent yesterday celebrating in true Sri Lankan style, making  " short eats," to share with our friends and neighbours

pol sambol- spicey coconut 

vadai- spicey, fried doughballs

kiribath- diamond- shaped , coconut rice

 For the day our house was full of chatter, laughter, the smell of spices  and the vague sense of hope that always comes with the dawning of a new year.
Teenagers lounged on the sofa, recovering from their New Year's Eve partying, little children fought over who should sit on the beanbag and grown ups chatted idly about nothing in particular.
 But somehow, somewhere in the conversation, someone mentioned New Years resolutions.
" I'm going to start running," said one of our friend's confidently. 
" I'm definitely going to start worrying less," said another.
" I'm going to stop drinking in January," said one of our newest friends, waving around her glass of mulled wine.
"But today is the 1st of January,"  someone pointed out. 
Our new friend paused, drink half way to her mouth, " yes, but today's a bank holiday,so it doesn't count ," she explained, draining the glass.
" We're going to have more friends round for dinner in 2014," chimed in some others. 
" I'm going to finish my website," said out free-lance graphic designer friend.
" I'm going to eat less," said one of our neighbours, reaching for another vadai.
I sat listening, eating kiri-bath with my fingers, dreaming I was sitting on a sun drenched, silver-white beach in Sri Lanka.
Outside it started to get dark and rain pattered on the window.
" How about you Becky?" someone asked, calling me out of my day dream. " Have you made any New Years resolutions?"
I glanced at the kids. They were lying, staring glassy eyed at the TV, surrounded by biscuits and crisp packets.
" I'm going to get the children to tidy up more often," I said.
" I think the idea of New Year's resolutions is that they are meant to be possible," said one of my friends, " that one's impossible. Choose a realistic one."
" You're right," I said, passing around a plate of fish cutlets, " since seeing the Hobbit, my real resolution for 2014 is to become an elf."
" But your ears aren't pointy, your hair isn't long and you can't speak elvish," pointed out one of our guests. 
" True," I said, " but those are all obstacles that can be easily overcome. I think the hardest about being an elf will be believing that I can always thwart my enemies at the speed of lightening while spending  the rest of my very long life drifting around writing songs and poems and being aesthetically pleasing. That part will definitely be a challenge."
" No point in making resolutions that are too easy though is there?" said someone supportively, " What's in this coconut stuff? It's really nice."
And so the conversation turned to recipes and dinners and the most delicious meals people had eaten in 2013.
And slowly people began to drift home, leaving a trail of paper plates, empty glasses, hopes for a happy 2014 and the warmth of friendship behind them.
" Your ears are a little bit pointy," said one of my friends, hugging me goodbye.
" Thanks, " I said, hugging her back.
But chances are I won't become an elf in 2014. 
Most likely I won't even get the kids to tidy up more.
Still, I can keep hoping.
Because the best thing about the beginning of a new year, is that there is always the chance it will be better the old one.
And that's worth celebrating.

So here's to hoping that 2014 is full of dreams and happiness... and just a little bit of elvish magic.

Happy New Year!